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Polish president compares 'LGBT ideology' to Soviet indoctrination

WION Web Team
Warsaw, PolandUpdated: Jun 13, 2020, 06:43 PM IST
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Photograph:(Reuters)

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Poland is a former satellite state of the Soviet Union and was the first country to shed communism in the region in 1989. This year the country was voted the worst in the European Union for LGBT rights in a poll by Brussels-based NGO ILGA-Europe.

Poland's President, Andrzej Duda, compared LGBT "ideology" to communist doctrine in a campaign speech on Saturday. This comes in the wake of a June 28 presidential election in the staunchly Catholic country where LGBT rights become a hotly debated issue.

Duda is an ally of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), which dismisses the promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights as a foreign influence undermining Poland's traditional values.

Poland is a former satellite state of the Soviet Union and was the first country to shed communism in the region in 1989. This year the country was voted the worst in the European Union for LGBT rights in a poll by Brussels-based NGO ILGA-Europe.

On Wednesday, Duda introduced a "Family Card" of election proposals, including a vow to not allow gay couples to marry or adopt children and to ban teaching about LGBT issues in schools.

"My parents' generation for forty years fought to eliminate communist ideology from schools, so it couldn't be forced on children. So youth, children, soldiers and youth organisations couldn't be indoctrinated," Duda told a rally in the southwestern town of Brzeg.

"They didn't fight for this so that a new ideology would appear that is even more destructive."

Opposition candidates and LGBT rights groups condemned Duda's speech.

Love Does Not Exclude, a Polish rights group, told Reuters Duda's proposals were similar to the Russian government's decision to ban "homosexual propaganda".

The Left's presidential candidate, Robert Biedron, the first Polish politician to openly identify as gay, called on Duda to "be done with this hatred" in a tweet posted after the speech.